I stretched badly and sprained my back. See, I sit at a desk most of the day, aside from the part where I go out for a long walk to make up for the rest of the day sat in a chair. My bed doesn’t feel that nice either. So it isn’t uncommon for me to feel stiff and need to bend forward to stretch my back out. (especially if I’ve been standing for more than 5 minutes. I’m like an old man -_-)
But this time of a hundred times, I don’t know what happened but it went wrong.

I got a horrendous pain in my back and it only got worse and worse as I stumbled into the kitchen to look for painkillers. By the time I got to the cupboard I could barely support myself enough to reach up for the paracetamol.
I made my way upstairs, scrapping my plans to get lunch, (Which was a bad thing later! I’ll get to that) knowing I just needed to sit down. For some reason I didn’t want to do so in front of my brother so I pulled myself up the stairs, and began getting cold flushes, and sweat on my face. I mean more sweat than normal for climbing the stairs, haha.

Anyway I plonked down into my chair and just breathed for a moment but it was getting worse. I tried to call mum but her phone went straight to voicemail since she was at work.

I was getting dizzy, naucious, my vision was blurring and going black, and there was a pressure building in my head along with a ringing in my ears. Oh, and I was still flushed with heat and cold at the same time and literally dripping with sweat.
So I dialed 999.

I hovered over the button for ages before finally hitting call. I felt like I was about to pass out. I got to the hospital and I told the lady on the line what was wrong and she told me that someone would call me back. While waiting I went online and messaged my closest friend about what happened and she suggested I call the house phone from my mobile just to tell my brother downstairs what happened, so I did that. By this point the symptoms were going down. But I was telling my other groups on discord and telegram and I noticed a small blind spot in my vision, which grew larger and more corrosive as I began feeling sick and dizzy and started breathing short and sharp again. I think the symptoms started going down again by the time they called or maybe it was by the time the paramedics got here.
They came up to help me get out of my chair and downstairs, by which point mum had also gotten home. I got to the front room and sat in a dining chair mum pulled into the front room while the paramedics did tests on me. They weren’t going to take me in to A&E but they noticed my blood pressure was sinking and when I said I was feeling sick and dizzy they had me lie down and raised my feet and got a fan on me and I felt immediately better save for a headache. I was also struggling to eat a sandwich.
They decided to take me in and walked me out to a stretcher outside and wheeled me up the path I’ve played on as a kid for my whole life to an ambulance at the end of the road and mum came with me to the hospital. It was a very surreal experience.

I have to say though, the paramedics were incredibly friendly and helpful. They did their job well and were a huge comfort.

They dropped me off on a bed right in the middle of a ward next to a reception and a few waiting chairs and I just sat there for ages waiting for nurses. Mum also noticed that I was extremely cold, which she guessed was cus of all the sweat (I was dry by now but it did its job way too well). So I got a blanket and that helped a bit. 8 was trying to update people on discord but started feeling tired and naucious just from using my phone.
When the nurse wheeled me over she took my vitals again and because my blood sugar was still very low she got me a sandwich.
See, like I said, I was already hungry before I had the accident and all I’d had was half of a peanut butter ham cheese and lettuce sandwich (I have crazy tastes okay?) so this was what was causing most of the problems. My body’s response to the pain was to put my blood pressure in my feet and since I needed food my blood sugar also went for a Swan dive and I think thats why I was so cold and sick.

So I ate through that ham sandwich very slowly as she wheeled me through the hospital to a small bay where a very friendly doctor saw me and had me stand up for the first time since I’d left the house, surprisingly didn’t hurt much, and looked at my back. He said that I needed to recover slowly and be moving about the house and stuff to let the muscles or whatever recover, I just needed meds to help me manage the pain so I didn’t pass out every time I tried to, and he gave me some denzapine and morphine to help me get home, saying that getting in and out of the car and the trip home would be thee hardest thing I’d have to do today. Though I don’t know if it was the meds but it wasn’t that hard. Also helps that my mum’s car is a big family ‘people eater’ and real easy to get out of the passenger seat.
Dad was like an hour late though so even after seeing the doc and slowly walking out, we still stood in the cold for like 20 minutes haha.

Anyway I’ve been resting in bed and occasionally having to take 20 minutes to painfully climb out of bed just to go pee and then resting downstairs in the big recliner chair during the day, and constantly cycling through Dihydrocodeine, paracetamol and ibuprofen.

But today I noticed it was a lot easier to get out of bed this morning and by the end of the day I was actually going up and down the stairs much faster than I had been and I walked from the bathroom across it my bedroom a couple times without even thinking about it and then realised the same 3 second journey took me a minute yesterday.
I’ve been able to move more easily even during periods when I forgot to take pain medication for several hours.

So hopefully I’ll recover faster than we thought. Here’s hoping!